The Catalog of Good Deeds

Each year we are invited once again to traverse the sacred days of the fast and come to that Week of all weeks - Holy Week. We are invited by the Church to take pause and reorient our crazy hectic schedule around "church time." Every year we are guided through this rich, profound and beautiful cycle of services where we participate in Christ's final days. If we pause enough we enter into the deep silence of the fear, isolation, sadness of the coming crucifixion of our Lord. Though the one Subject is Christ Himself, we come to find that it is us as well who become a vital component to these services. As we are remembering these events - Judas, the crowds, the Virgins awaiting the bridegroom, the harlot who anointed Christ's feet - we begin to see that we are just like these persons. We are the Virgins who are not ready for the bridegroom. We are Judas who so often are willing to sell Christ for the sake of our worldly gain, we are the disciples who deny our Lord, and we are the crowds who boldly proclaim "crucify him!" As a new mission we continue to take steps to fill out our liturgical cycle and this year we are adding the services for Monday through Thursday known as Bridegroom Matins.

The first three days of Holy Week are referred to as "the end". We have just laid our palm branches down into the silence of Christ's final days. Darkness and judgment are the theme for the first three days. This is centered around the the Gospel reading from Great and Holy Tuesday found in Matt. 24:36 - 26:2. This is the parable of the ten virgins. Here we are urged not to be like the five foolish virgins who were not prepared for the coming of the bridegroom. The troparion hymn sung on these three days:

Behold the bridegroom comes at midnight, and blessed is the servant whom he shall find watching; and again, unworthy is the servant whom He shall find heedless.

Beware, therefore, O my soul, do not be weighed down with sleep, lest you be given over to death, and lest you be shut out of the Kingdom.

But rouse yourself, crying: "Holy! Holy! Holy! art Thou, O our God. Through the Theotokos have mercy on us!"

Also another hymn:

Thy bridal chamber I see adorned, O my Savior, but I have no wedding garment that I may enter. O Giver of Light, enlighten the vesture of my soul, and save me.

As we enter into Holy Week we are overwhelmed with the sense that we have nothing to offer our Lord and that we have wasted our life and are asleep and that we have missed the coming of the bridegroom. It is only through the grace and mercy of our Lord's voluntary Passion that we are made worthy to enter. We hear this echoed on Monday evening:

How shall I, the unworthy one, appear in the splendor of Thy saints?

For if I dare enter Thy bridal chamber with them my garments will betray me: they are unfit for a wedding.

The angels will cast me out in chains.

Cleans the filth of my soul, O Lord, and save me in Thy love for mankind.

O Christ the Bridegroom, my soul has slumbered in laziness.

I have no lamp aflame with virtues.

Like the foolish virgins I wander aimlessly when it is time for work.

But do not close Thy compassionate heart to me, O Master.

Rouse me, shake off my heavy sleep.

Lead me with the wise virgins into the bridal chamber, that I may hear the pure voice of those that feast and cry unceasingly: O Lord, glory to Thee!

It is important to let the full weight of these services permeate us. Let the heavy truth of seeing ourselves as we truly are lead us to glorify Christ's passion and cause us to cry out as we will on Holy Friday, "show us also Thy Glorious resurrection!"

By Fr. Christopher Foley

A Prayer for Christ's Assistance and Thanks for His Mercies

St. Symeon the New Theologian:

But, O Lord, guide of those gone astray, the unerring path of those who come to You, turn us all around and place us before Your ladder, and direct our hands with Your own hand to take hold of it, and enable us to raise ourselves from the earth and to step onto the first rung, so that we may know that we have somehow, sometime, taken hold of something with our hands and have raised ourselves a little from the earth. For we are obliged to ascend, just a little, at first to You, in order that You, the good Master, may come down from so far away and unite Yourself to us. Show us, Master, the door at the forecourt of Your Kingdom, so that we may knock patiently at it until the gate should open to us by virtue of our voluntary death, and we enter within and knock one by one at the gates and open them. May You Yourself, hearing our groans and the beating of our breasts, hurry to come down from your high chambers, You the greatly compassionate and merciful God, that we may hear the sounds of Your all-immaculate feat and know that You are opening the innermost gates, closed to sinners, and drawing near us and saying: "Who is he who is knocking?" and that, answering with cries and tears, we may reply to You with trembling and joy: "We are, Master, we the unworthy, the wretched, Your cast-off and wicked servants, we who until now have been wandering astray among mountains and cliffs and ravines. We are those who have senselessly soiled Your holy Baptism, who denied our covenants with You. We are those who have fled away and even deserted voluntarily to Your enemy who plots against our souls. Now, though, having remembered You and Your love for mankind, we have run away from there and, weary with labor, have come to You in great fear and trembling.

Forgive and be not angry with us, Master, but with mercy and compassion for us wretched ones open to us, Lord, and do not call to mind our evils, neither bear rancour for our ingratitude, for we have stood long hours in knocking, nor misunderstand us, Your servants, lest, having been slighted, we turn backwards. We have grown weary beating on the doors to the forecourts of Your Kingdom. Open to us, You Who by nature love mankind, have compassion on us. For if only You open to us the door of Your mercy by a little, who will not shudder at seeing you? Who will not fall prostrate in fear and trembling and beseech Your mercy? Who, seeing You Who have ten thousand times ten thousand angels and a thousand thousand archangels and thrones and powers, abandoning the heights and coming down to us, and meeting and opening to us, and both welcoming us graciously and falling upon our necks and kissing us, who will not immediately wounded to the quick and undone as if he were dead? And his bones will be poured out on the earth like water, and he will weep day and night reckoning up the ocean of Your compassion and goodness, and reflecting the glory and splendor of Your countenance. Glory be to You, Who have arranged all things thus. Glory to You, Who have been well-pleased to be seen by and united with us. Glory to You, Who for the sake of Your great compassion are revealed and seen by us, You Who by nature are invisible even to the heavenly powers themselves. Glory to You, Whose mercy toward us is unspeakable, Who have deigned through repentance both to abide and to walk with us. Through the payers of our Holy Fathers, O Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us. Amen.

Source: http://holycrossoca.org/newslet/0804.html

Poison of Rage

A gloomy neighbor visited an elder.

– I suffer from insomnia, – he complained. – That’s because the small birds out there keep chirping all night long!

– You’re the reason of your own suffering, – the elder replied. – You poison all your nights with rage towards the innocent little birds. Singing is their life! If you had chosen not to be mad at them but to enjoy listening to their songs, their chirping would become your best lullaby!

These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full (John 15:11)

The Nature of a Wolf

There was a forest where all animals were very afraid of the terrible wolf. They would run away as soon as they heard him coming.

The wolf gathered all the community of the forest one day.

– I don’t want our forest to be ruled by fear. Don’t look at me as if I were an insatiable beast and don’t run away from me. I won’t eat strong animals. I’ll be fine with sick and weak ones, – the wolf promised. – Bring them to me, and I won’t touch the rest!

The animals agreed. They brought weak and ill animals to the wolf but he ate the strong animals, too!

– Why do you eat the strong animals? You promised not to, didn’t you?

– Why are your “strong” animals weak, too? It’s none of my business, – the wolf retorted.

You mustn’t negotiate with the Satan. He will fool you anyway.

… the devil… was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. (John 8:44)

The Soft Word of God and the Hard Heart

When some monks asked Abba Poemen about heart numbness, he gave them the following example:

– Water is soft but a rock is hard; however, if there is a water pipe above the rock, water drops leave a trail in the rock little by little. Similarly, God’s Word is soft, and our hearts are hard; however, if one hears the Word of God often, his heart opens up to accept the fear of God..

The Skete Paterikon

Can you see what an insane word does? I’ll not leave you without an example of a good word, either. A faint-hearted soldier was sent on a scouting mission during a war. Everyone knew that he was fearful and they laughed at him when they learned where the sergeant was sending him. There was only one soldier who didn’t laugh. He approached his comrade with words of support. The faint-hearted soldier said, “I’ll die, the enemy is near!” — “Don’t be afraid, brother, God is nearer,” the good soldier said in response. These words were like a large bell that tolled in the faint-hearted soldier’s soul. This bell kept ringing till the end of the war. In the end, the timid and fearful soldier returned home wearing many medals and military decorations for his courage. This is how just a single kind word made all the difference: “Don’t be afraid: God is nearer.”

Saint Nikolaj of Serbia. Missionary Letters. Letter 70, to a humble man who confessed that he had sinned in his words

The King and His Wise Advisor

There was a mighty king who had a wise advisor. He always took his advisor wherever he went.

One day, the king went hunting and had an awful misfortune: he lost one finger on his hand while shooting. He was furious.

– Sire, everything happens for a reason! – the advisor tried to calm the king down.

However, the king was even more furious upon hearing these words. He ordered to throw the advisor in jail and give him only water.

Some time later, the king decided to go hunting again. This time, he set forth to distant parts of the country where there were many wild animals, as rumors had it. Unluckily, there were violent savages in those lands, too. The savages attacked the king and his escort. They were pagans and practised bloody sacrifices.

The savages grabbed the king and dragged him to the chief priest. He was thrilled:

– Now we’ll appease gods at last!

When the priest laid the king on the sacrificial table and prepared to stab him with a knife, he suddenly noticed that there was one finger missing on the poor king’s hand. He was outraged.

– Gods deserve only the best! – he yelled at his fellow tribesmen. – You’ve brought that poor thing to me instead! Look, he has a finger missing!

They threw the king back to the wild forest. Hardly did he find his way back to his capital when he ran to the wise advisor.

– You were right! I lost one finger but I was left alive! – the king was saying and weeping. – You’ve had to go through so much pain, too. You’ve had to spend so much time in jail.

– Everything that happens is good, – the advisor responded. – If I hadn’t been in jail, I would definitely have gone hunting with you, with unpredictable results.

Sparrow

Two little sisters heard the biblical account about the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden and told their father:

— Daddy, if Lena and I had been in the paradise, we would have never eaten the forbidden fruit because God had prohibited to touch it. Right, Dad?

— You’re right, — the father smiled and turned off the light in the daughters’ bedroom.

The father got up very early the following morning. He caught a sparrow in the backyard and put it into a pot. He woke the girls up and showed them the pot that he had put on the windowsill of an open kitchen window. The father said:

— Please don’t open the pot until I get back home from work. When I’m back, I’ll show you what’s inside. If you’re obedient, I’ll buy you a new toy.

The father left for work, and the children stayed home alone. They were doing their best to distract themselves from the little pot in the kitchen but they were so excited and curious that at the end, Masha, the older sister, persuaded Lena, the younger sister who was afraid that the father would be angry with them, to look into the pot.

— We’ll peek inside and close the cover, — she said. — Dad won’t even know.

As soon as Lena opened the pot, the sparrow flew out of the window. The girls were scared and shut the empty pot quickly.

When the father returned in the evening, he saw that the pot was empty and said:

— Well, my little Eves, you couldn’t help peeking inside the pot, could you? That was how Eve couldn’t help tasting the fruit of knowledge of good and evil.

— Dad, what was that tree like and why was it forbidden to eat its fruit? — Masha asked.

— It was just a regular tree with edible fruit but the first people broke the commandment of the Lord and chose evil over good because all evil starts with disobedience, while all good starts from obedience. God would have taught Adam and Eve a lot of good things, if they had been obedient. This sparrow was your tree of knowledge of good and evil today, and you didn’t obey me, either. You’ve failed the Adam and Eve’s temptation.

Priest and Schemamonk John from Greece told me a parable about a family who lived on a desert island in the middle of an ocean after having been shipwrecked. All family members ate roots and grass and lived in a cave. The children did not remember when and how they got to the island. They forgot their native land and did not know what bread, milk, or fruit was. One day, a boat with four natives landed at the island. The shipwrecked were very happy and decided to leave the island immediately. However, the boat was so small that it could not transport the entire family. That was why the father of the family left the island first. The mother and the children were crying as they bade farewell to their beloved father.

The father comforted his family by saying, “Don’t cry. Life’s better in our native country, and we’ll meet again soon.”

Soon, the boat returned and took the mother away. The children were crying again.

– Don’t cry, my children, – the mother said, – we’ll meet in the better land soon.

Finally, the boat came for the kids. When the last dwellers of the island found themselves in the boundless sea, they were scared of their dark-skinned helpers all the way. Imagine how happy they were when they met their parents on the shore!

“Dear children, – their father told them, – our relocation from the desert island to the fertile land has a profound meaning: we all have to face a passage from this world into the better world. Our earth is like an island. The country we’re in slightly resembles the Heaven. The tumultuous passage from the island to this land is like death. The boat is the coffin, which will be carried by four strong men in black clothes. When it is time for us to say goodbye to the earth, those who are pious, who love God and obey his will, will not be afraid of the passage: death for them is merely a journey into the better life.”

Hieromonk Eutychius (Dovganiuk)

Translated from: https://azbyka.ru/days

Come, O faithful, let us work zealously for the Master; for he distributes wealth to his servants.

Let each of us, according to his or her ability increase the talent of grace:

let one be adorned in wisdom through good works; let another celebrate a service in splendor.

Ihe one distributes his wealth to the poor; the other communicates the word to those untaught.

Thus we shall increase what has been entrusted to us, and, as faithful stewards of grace, we shall be accounted worthy of the Master’s joy.

Make us worthy of this, Christ our God, in your love for mankind.

As more and more people attend and thoughtfully follow the services of Holy Week, many are struck by the incomparably rich hymnography, often sung in unique and evocative melodies. Many of us have favorite hymns, which we greet as friends when they come along each year. There are the landmark hymns of the Bridegroom services, repeated for several nights running. There are, of course, the unforgettable moments of Holy Thursday: “Of Thy Mystical Supper!” The Twelve Gospels! Then Friday: the Burial Shroud! The Lamentations!… Then Saturday and the victorious Prokeimenon! These are like lanterns, lighting our way forward in an otherwise dark terrain.

One of my own favorites is a humbler little hymn (blink and you’ve missed it for the year) sung with the Aposticha at Matins and Vespers on Holy Tuesday. [The hymn’s text is at the beginning of this post.] Why do we sing such a hymn during Holy Week? Let’s spend a minute examining its liturgical context before looking at it more closely.

By the time we sing this hymn, we have entered squarely into the journey to Christ’s life-giving Passion. We have traveled six weeks of Great Lent. We have celebrated the victorious entry of Our Lord into Jerusalem (a bitter victory: Jesus knowingly enters the city where he is to be betrayed and slain). We have heard him preaching with increased intensity against civil and religious hypocrisy and injustice. But as we follow Jesus’s journey, we also direct attention at ourselves. As we Orthodox always do in our penitential hymnography (for example, in the Canon of St. Andrew of Crete), we apply all that hypocrisy, all the examples of pride, lust, murderous intent, to our own lives as we live them. It is not a pretty picture. So we ask God’s forgiveness and beg him to help us to become better human beings.

During Holy Week, this sort of penitence is brought to a high level of intensity, a dosage that we cannot sustain for long. But here we are pushed to our limits, because Our Lord himself, the King of Glory, who made the heavens and the earth, is on his way to being betrayed, abandoned, and slaughtered. Matters do not get any more serious than that. We have to make sure we are paying full attention.

That is why, at the Bridegroom services, usually celebrated on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday evenings of Holy Week, we pray for several things surrounding the theme of bring ourselves into realization of who we are and what is happening:

– We ask God to “illumine the vesture of our souls,” to purify us, to give us appropriate clothing in order to celebrate properly the Feast of Feasts.

– We remind our own selves to be wakeful and watchful, rouse ourselves out of our slumber, to penetrate the usual half-awake state of our minds and hearts.

– We contemplate scriptural images as lessons or as inspiration. The common theme to all these services is that of the Bridegroom (Christ) who comes in the middle of the night and finds some who are prepared, others for whom it is now too late. But on different evenings we sing about the withered fig tree, the betrayal of Judas, and – as a positive image – the repentant harlot who wipes Jesus’s feet with her tears and hair.

It is within this broader context, then, that we come to that Holy Tuesday hymn, in which we urge each other to do the particular work that God has given us to do. Let’s look through it to see what it is saying, and why people may be attracted to it.

– We goad each other to work zealously. Don’t almost do something, or just thing about doing it, or do it in a half-baked way. Do it, and do it well for the sake of God.

– Notice that God gives the wedding garment. God gives the talent. Without this initial gift, we have nothing, we are nothing. But once we realize that God has filled our otherwise empty vessels, it is very much up to us to take up that gift and to act on it.

– When God distributes his gifts, he is not using a cookie cutter to form identical little shapes. He is not drawing a uniform pattern for us to imitate like robots. We are different from each other; we do not strive to conform to a single model, even if sometimes the image of a virtuous person in the Church’s Tradition seems frustratingly uniform. In iconography and spiritual literature (depending on where we’re looking) we might find a preponderance of monks, bishops, and virgins. But if we look closer, we find a message applicable to school teachers, social workers, bankers, moms, dads, writers, sanitation workers – people from all walks of life and different talents.

– When it begins enumerating tasks, our hymn encourages us to “do good work” – whatever our station of life, whatever our vocation. Then it identifies specific vocations – but let us take note how these are both particular and universal in character.

– One “celebrates a service in splendor.” (When I was sacristan during my student days at St. Vladimir’s Seminary, I watched as Fr. Paul Lazor, the consummate liturgical celebrant, made a large and meaningful sign of the cross over himself during that line.) Although this verse does carry a particular, clerical meaning, doesn’t it also pertain to our corporate celebration of the liturgy? All of us celebrate the liturgy in splendor when we participate meaningfully in it. Going still further, can this not also pertain to any way in which we – whether lay or ordained – as “priests” offer the world to God, making our whole life a creative service of splendor?

– In the Divine Liturgy we pray for “those who remember the poor.” Is helping the poor, then, something that someoneelse always does? No. Although we recognize realistically that not everyone is called to make his or her whole life a service to the poor, none of us is off the hook in the basic, universal, Christ-imitating vocation of ministry to the poor, solidarity with the outcast, speaking out against injustice.

– While teaching the Word applies in a particular way to teachers and catechists, don’t we all impart knowledge and wisdom – both explicitly and implicitly Christian Truth – in our various vocations (not least those of us who are parents or godparents)?

Wherever we are, whatever we do, whatever our station in life our task is to build upon what we have been given. First, of course, we have to identify the gift, and that is not always simple. But by understanding the gift and recalling that it indeed comes from God himself, we can build on it. The gospels tell us that wasting our talents is one of the things that seriously displeases God. But we pray that, if we recognize and work with our gifts, we will be “deemed worthy of the Master’s joy,” a joy that is beyond anything that we can imagine.

Source: https://svotssynaxis.com/2012/04/10/holy-tuesday-a-hymn-of-invitation/

“For the husband is the head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the Church; and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore just as the Church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for it” (Ephesians 5:23)

Some brides-to-be resent this epistle read at every Orthodox Church wedding. They think it’s sexist—not politically correct in this era of liberation of women. But that objection is misdirected. This advice of St. Paul is not about subordination of woman to man, nor is it about control. This is about love. The holy apostle is not putting wives down; he’s raising the vision of husbands to a spiritual awareness of responsibility.

It’s a daring equation, comparing the husband with Christ. Can a Christian who wears a cross at his neck and hangs a cross in his bedroom not comprehend the great, sacrificial love that Jesus Christ has demonstrated for His Church? There is not an atom of selfishness in it. Who reading the gospels can find somewhere or some word of the loving Lord that suggests, “What’s in it for Me?” Show me a place that implies the Church doing something for Christ, rather than what Christ is doing for the Church.

St. Paul is speaking to all married men. Do you expect or even demand obedience from your wives? Look up at Christ on the cross. Will you ever do that for her? You insist that your wife love you exclusively. That’s your right as a husband and her obligation as your wife. Then you must first demonstrate your willingness to lay down your life in her behalf. If it comes to one of you making a sacrifice for the sake of the family, step out smartly and be the one who offers his life for wife and family. Yes, granted, St. Paul wrote that the husband is the head of the wife, but that’s not all he wrote on the subject. The love of Christ for the Church is your measure of your own adoration of your wife. God forbid that you ever terrorize her, intimidate her or control her by temper tantrums or any of the more subtle mind control methods rampant in our culture. You were commissioned by Christ in the sacred sacrament of marriage to love and honor her—she is ever your queen, and you must look for the crown still worn on her head, albeit invisibly.

Your love for her must be always pure and sacred. She is a temple of the Holy Spirit, and you must do nothing to defile that living temple. She is baptized in the blessed water of Jordan. It takes nothing from the romance or the love act to treat your wife as a being precious in the sight of the Lord. Any expression of love that degrades, humiliates or plain uses the partner is unworthy of your marriage. Any violation of your marital obligations to one another, adultery or lewdness, will invite the serpent of evil into your bed, cause you deceit and hypocrisy, and reduce you to shame and self-rejection.

True love will be constantly in search of ways to please your spouse, not yourself. Real affection is given through a glance, a touch, a card or flower. This woman is not your cook, your washerwoman or maid. She is far more than the one who cares for your children. If that’s all she is to you, you are unworthy of calling yourself her husband.

If as you heard at the wedding, you “leave father and mother and cleave to your wife,” she has become your very body. You are one flesh and blood with her. You can no more separate yourself from her that you would hack off your right arm. Despite our wicked society, you don’t change partners; you live with the one that God gave you.

Most of all, your love is a reflection of the love of Christ for your spiritual family and the Church of which you all are a part. Your home is an extension of your parish, a chapel where love is the binding ingredient between your family members and with the loving Lord and yourself.

Source: https://oca.org/reflections/berzonsky/christ-church-husband-and-wife

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